Password Policy

A password policy class for Ruby

Author Craig Russell [email protected]
Version 0.1

Password Policy is a library that makes it easy to implement a password format policy on your application. It includes functions to return password validation errors.

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Usage

Getting Started

Using Password Policy on your site is simple.

1. Install the Gem

   $ gem install password_policy
   

2. Include the library

   > require 'password_policy'
   

3. Create the Password Policy object

   > @policy = PasswordPolicy.new
   

4. Define the policy rules

   > @policy.min_length = 8;
   > @policy.max_length = 64;
   

5. Validate a password

   puts "Password OK!" if @policy.validate 'passw0rd'
   

Advanced

Separate Policy Rules

You can define your policy rules separately as a Hash and pass this to the constructor, rather than defining rules on the object. Hash keys should be rule identifiers, values should be the correct type. This is useful if you want to define your policy rules is a separate configuration file.

@rules = {
  :min_length => 8,
  :max_length => 64
}
@policy = PasswordPolicy.new @rules

Password Validation Errors

After validating the password, any errors can be retrieved as an array of strings.

@policy.errors.each do |error|
  puts error
end

Policy Rules

A Password Policy has several rules which can be configured, these are detailed below.

Policy rules have different types, a rule will ignore any attempt to set its value to an incorrect type. Please refer to the documentation below.

IMPORTANT It is possible to define conflicting rules in a policy, which would make it impossible to set a password.

@rules = {
  :min_length => 20,
  :max_length => 10
}

Minimum Length

The minimum length of a password

Identifier min_length

@policy.min_length = 10;

Maximum Length

The maximum length of a password

Identifier max_length

@policy.max_length = 64;

Minimum Lower-case Characters

The minimum number of lower-case characters allowed in a password

Identifier min_lowercase_chars

@policy.min_lowercase_chars = 1;

Minimum Uppercase Characters

The minimum number of uppercase characters allowed in a password

Identifier min_uppercase_chars

@policy.min_uppercase_chars = 1;

Minimun Numeric Characters

The minimum number of numeric characters allowed in a password

Identifier min_numeric_chars

@policy.min_numeric_chars = 1;

Minimun Special Characters

The minimum number of special characters allowed in a password

Identifier min_special_chars

@policy.min_special_chars = 0;

Maximum Special Characters

The maximum number of special characters allowed in a password

Identifier max_special_chars

@policy.max_special_chars = 64;